Another danger for the sign resulted from the attempt to number the houses of which we hear, perhaps for the first time in France, as early as 1512. This first attempt failed, but in the enlightened eighteenth century the new and certainly more reasonable method of distinguishing a house from its neighbor decidedly gained ground. In 1805 it was made obligatory by the Parisian police. A similar development we observe in England. Nobody will deny the practical progress and no business man would like to return to the old times when an English bookseller, for instance, had to give the address of his shop in the following way: “Over against the Royal Exchange at the Sugar Loaf next Temple Bar.” In Germany, where the centralization in large capitals made slower progress and a multitude of small social and political centers kept their own, the rational institution of numbering the houses, so necessary in great cities like Paris or London, was not accepted so quickly. In 1802 Dresden, for instance, had not even on the street corners signs indicating their names; “an institution that facilitates topography and topography facilitates business,” remarks a judicious contemporary. Here in Germany the cold number did not conquer so easily over the poetical warmth of the dear old sign. In the quiet, imperial towns of the south the artistic sign of the Rococo period and the Empire style, unpersecuted and unmolested, keep their place in the sun up to the present day in spite of some ill-advised landlords who thought it necessary to hide the humble oxen or lamb in the garret and call their house by some new pretentious French name like “Hotel de l’Europe” or the like. [Illustration: ·Stuttgart·] In our own enlightened times of general school education, nobody needs any more the sign as a guide through even the most modest town. Everywhere the number has taken its place for this purpose and we regret to admit for the history of the sign too the truth of Darwin’s words: “Progress in history means the decline of phantasy and the advance of thought.” ENVOY AND THE MORAL? [Illustration: Sonne Neckarsulm, Württemberg] ENVOY AND THE MORAL? “I am here in a strange land and have perhaps the seat of honor at table in this inn; but the man down there on the end has just as good a right here and there as I, since we are both here only guests.” MARTIN LUTHER: Sermons. Jubilate, 1542.